Mastering the Internet

Last November we launched our ‘Time for Transparency’ campaign, revealing new polling that showed 66% of people want more information about how surveillance powers are used, with 70% wanting companies like BT and EE to publish their own reports about the requests they receive, as companies like Google, Facebook and Microsoft now regularly release. Today […]

Big Brother Watch was invited to submit a paper to the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament, relating to it’s inquiry into the balance between security and privacy. You can now read our submission below. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY In a Democratic society, some secrecy is tolerated, as are some intrusions upon liberty and privacy, provided the […]

If GCHQ or any other agency is obtaining mobile phone data through the Dishfire programme without a RIPA notice, that is circumventing British law. The statements made have sought to only address questions about content being accessed, not metadata. This confusion should be urgently addressed. Under UK law, if an agency or police force want […]

Today, the editor of the Guardian gives evidence to the Home Affairs select committee, as part of the committee’s work on counter terrorism. Perhaps that might give the committee to question why Parliament learned of much of GCHQ’s activity from the newspaper, rather than from Ministers. Indeed, it seems on current evidence that will remain […]

Shortly after Lord Macdonald, the former director of public prosecutions, condemned the way the new head of MI5 had dismissed calls for greater scrutiny several senior figures involved in the scrutiny of the draft communications data bill have said that Britain’s spy agencies may be operating outside the law in the mass internet surveillance programmes […]